Barry Long: Spiritual Master

Barry Long was a spiritual master. He was a great man, a giant in terms of his contribution to the rectification of human ignorance through his enlightened being. It was self-evident to me when I first saw Barry at Olympia in London in 1993 that here was a man who personified the living truth. The fact that I recognised this so clearly removed any uncertainty about my next move, which was to leave England and travel to be with Barry in Australia. Before then there was a residential teaching in Leicester and a whistle-stop trip to Russia for a day’s seminar in St. Petersburg.

When you discover something so real and true there is the knowledge that there is nowhere else you want to be. Being with this extraordinary man as much as possible became, for the next ten years, the main focus of my life. Together with my partner Marilyn, we travelled extensively in the next decade, often to Australia and to many other countries around the world, absorbing and endeavouring to live Barry’s extraordinary teaching. Throughout this period there was the knowledge of the great privilege of being in the master’s presence and the sense of higher purpose. It was a time of intense inner change for both of us that was sustained through Barry’s deep love and spiritual profundity. The master was there to give us what was needed so that we could carry on.

The remarkable teaching of Barry Long encapsulates the entire spectrum of the spiritual life. There has never been a teaching like it and never will be again. Barry was a true original, unifying the perennial search for the absolute in the realisation of the transcendental God out of existence and the love of God in existence through the physical union of man and woman.

No man has given so much to me in my life. I always perceived such a fine quality in Barry. To me he was a beautiful man in the sense of the rightness and integrity that characterised his life; I never saw Barry take anything for himself. Perhaps his most extraordinary quality was that he was an ordinary man living amongst the people and yet imbued with the sublime power of the master. He truly was an inspiration to me while alive, as he is now in the mystery and eternal moment of life.